DORO PESCH: 'What I Care The Most About Is What The Fans Have To Say'

Elena Francis of Metal Discovery conducted an interview with German metal queen Doro Pesch on April 23, 2009 at the Forum in London, England. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Metal Discovery: How have critics and fans been receiving "Fear No Evil", your latest album?

Doro Pesch: So far I've only seen good stuff and good reviews. What I care the most about is what the fans have to say because I do it purely for the fans. So far it's been received very well, I think. Tonight we will play two songs because we have a 40-45 minutes. We will definitely play "Celebrate" and "Night of the Warlock". Actually, "Celebrate" was the most successful single we ever had in Spain. It went into the charts at number three. Usually only normal pop songs [get there] so it was very good. In Germany, the whole album hit number eleven. That was great.

Metal Discovery: How in your own words would you say this new album is different from the other work that you've done?

Doro Pesch: It sums up all the 25 years pretty nice and it has lots of anthems on it. I love anthems. I think it has some good old school songs on it, with "Night of the Warlock" with the intro and the background vocals, and then some more modern songs like "Running From the Devil"; I think is a little bit more modern. It has one of the hardest songs on the record; "Caught in the Battle" is one of the hardest songs we ever did. Some special things, like "25 Years", that's thanks the fans a lot. It has all the good things from the '80s to now. The album cover was painted by Geoffrey Gillespie again.

Metal Discovery: On the song "Walking With The Angels" you have Tarja Turunen [ex-NIGHTWISH] singing. How did that come about then?

Doro Pesch: Actually, that's my first duet with another female singer on our record. I did one time a duet with AFTER FOREVER — Floor Jansen. Actually, the guitarist, he is playing this tour here in England, and then our guitar player will come back after the England tour. I thought I wanted to write a song about angel power and then I thought, "Man, it might be so nice to have someone with a more angelic voice singing it." I met Tarja many years ago for the first time at Wacken. I saw NIGHTWISH for the first time and I was blown away. I have this friend of ours; her name is Regina Halmich. She was for 12 or 13 years [an] undisputed boxing champion.

Metal Discovery: Oh, you wrote the single for her?

Doro Pesch: Yeah, she quit her active career last year. It was a huge event and Tarja was there and I was there. While we were doing soundchecks, we kind of got to talk to each other and said, "Man, it would be so nice to do something together eventually." And then a couple of months later, we were working on this song and I thought it might be the perfect song for Tarja. I sent her the demo and she said, "I love it," and she did it. And then she sent me her demo. She wants to do a winter edition of the last album and then this one song "The Seer" on it.

Metal Discovery: Tarja's not the only person who has appeared on the new album. You've got several. How did that come about and how did you decide who to choose because I imagine you know lots of musicians?

Doro Pesch: Yeah, actually, all my closest friends and people that I have a long history with or we go on tour with, for example Veronica Freeman from BENEDICTUM was our opening act on the last "Warrior Soul" tour. Actually, I wanted to write a song for the 25th anniversary, something like "True as Steel" or "All We Are" where everybody sings along. I called up all the fan club members and we met in Germany. It's a pretty nice club in Bornholm. People from all over the world came and we sang along. The engineer told me to give him many choices, for example ten people singing, sometimes fifty people, sometimes only two people singing, the men and the women. When women were singing I thought this sounds so great, so special. Then I thought I want to do a full metal female version and then I called up all the girls. Actually, I flew over to London to see GIRLSCHOOL. They played with DIO and then I gave them the demo and they were the first ones I gave the demo to. They recorded it in their studio and it came back and I thought, "Wow, that sounds great." I then went to call Angela in ARCH ENEMY, Sabina Classen [HOLY MOSES], Floor from AFTER FOREVER and Liv from LEAVES' EYES. I thought it might be so interesting to have people from all sorts of metal genres — from goth metal to death metal to thrash metal — and then we mixed it all together. It's actually a very exciting version. I gave Biff [Byford, SAXON] the demo as well and I got the vocals back and thought, "Oh, man, this sounds great." We have three versions: one with the fans only, one with Biff and one with all the ladies and on the record we have the one version with everybody, but I think all the versions came out really great. Now we're here together two weeks with SAXON. It worked out perfect.

Read the entire interview from Metal Discovery.